Uplift in air traffic as Summer ’24 gets under way

NATS, the UK’s major provider of air traffic services, safely handled 201,552 flights in April, a five per cent increase on April 2023 but still five per cent down on 2019, the busiest year on record.

April marked the start of the summer schedule for European carriers and most growth came in non-transatlantic arrivals and departures, which means largely European destinations.  Busiest routes were between the UK and Spain, France and Italy. Slowest growth in the month was in UK domestic flights.

Weather continued to affect punctuality, generating 81 per cent of delay in April.  NATS-attributable delay for April 2024 was 65 per cent lower than in April 2023, equating to an average of less than three seconds delay per aircraft. 99.5 per cent of aircraft experienced no NATS-attributable delay; the average delay per delayed flight was 9.88 minutes.

According to Eurocontrol, NATS’ Swanwick centre was the busiest in Europe during April. Traffic across Europe increased by 6.2 per cent on last year and NATS handled 24 per cent of it.  The proportion of overall European delay attributed to NATS was one per cent.  This compares with April 2023 when NATS handled 24.4 per cent of European traffic and was responsible for 1.4 per cent of the delay.

Kathryn Leahy, Chief Operations Officer

Kathryn Leahy, Chief Operations Officer, said: “The build-up to Easter this year fell in March, a week or so earlier than last year, otherwise I think we would have seen our figures even higher.  This is an encouraging start to the summer season and it’s good to see the prime holiday routes already starting to pick up.“NATS is part of Eurocontrol’s All Together Now initiative, coordinating operations across the whole of Europe to deliver the smoothest, most punctual summer we possibly can.  We will continue to do all we can to ensure the UK’s performance leads the way.”